Rachel Naomi Remen Quotes

Integrity usually comes to people slowly and takes them unawares, as part of a natural process of maturing or through the need to be there for someone else who is counting on them. But it can appear full-blown in times of crisis or loss. In my work I have seen many people recover a greater integrity because they have lost something or someone very dear to them.

With certain people we may get to try on a greater wholeness for a time, to actually experience being more. These experiences are a sort of grace. They help us to know not only the direction of our personal wholeness but how it feels and even tastes. Everyone's wholeness is unique and even such common role models as Eleanor Roosevelt and Albert Schweitzer can distance us from ourselves. Our wholeness will look different than theirs. Our wholeness fits us better than theirs. Our wholeness is much more attainable for us than theirs ever could be.

We usually look outside of ourselves for heroes and teachers. It has not occurred to most people that they may already be the role model they seek. The wholeness they are looking for may be trapped within themselves by beliefs, attitudes, and self-doubt. But our wholeness exists in us now. Trapped though it may be, it can be called upon for guidance, direction, and most fundamentally, comfort. It can be remembered. Eventually we may come to live by it.

Before every session, I take a moment to remember my humanity. There is no experience that this man has that I cannot share with him, no fear that I cannot understand, no suffering that I cannot care about, because I too am human. No matter how deep his wound, he does not need to be ashamed in front of me. I too am vulnerable. And because of this, I am enough.

Freedom may come not from being in control of life but rather from a willingness to move with the events of life, to hold on to our memories but let go of the past, to choose, when necessary, the inevitable. We can become free at any time.

Before every session, I take a moment to remember my humanity. There is no experience that this man has that I cannot share with him, no fear that I cannot understand, no suffering that I cannot care about, because I too am human. No matter how deep his wound, he does not need to be ashamed in front of me. I too am vulnerable. And because of this, I am enough. Whatever his story, he no longer needs to be alone with it. This is what will allow his healing to begin. (Carl Rogers)

I am no longer as inspired by expertise as I once was. Perhaps the worth of any lifetime is measured more in kindness than in competency.

Inner peace is more a question of cultivating perspective, meaning, and wisdom even as life touches you with its pain.

Life offers its wisdom generously. Everything teaches. Not everyone learns.

Dieter said softly, 'My doctor's love is as important to me as his chemotherapy, but he does not know.' Dieter's statement meant a great deal to me. I had not known either. For a long time, I had carried the belief that as a physician my love didn't matter and the only thing of value I had to offer was my knowledge and skill. My training had argued me out of my truth. Medicine is as close to love as it is to science, and its relationships matter even at the edge of life itself.

One of the reasons many physicians feel drained by their work is that they do not know how to make an opening to receive anything from their patients. The way we were trained, receiving is considered unprofessional. The way most of us were raised, receiving is considered a weakness.

I have learned that the things that divide us are far less important than those that connect us.

Often times of crisis are times of discovery, periods when we cannot maintain our old ways of doing things and enter into a steep learning curve. Sometimes it takes a crisis to initiate growth.

pinecone in her hands move as if it had become her own living heart. Deeply shaken, she looked up for the first time and found an unmistakable Presence in the center of the labyrinth, waiting for her. For just the briefest moment she could see Him quite clearly. His heart was open, a place of refuge for all who suffer. It had been broken open by the suffering in the world in the same way hers had been. Suddenly she understood why others had come to her for refuge since her childhood. The suffering she was able to feel had made her trustworthy. She stumbled the last few steps into the center of the labyrinth, knelt down, and for the first time since she was a child, she wept. In a talk about compassion, a former teacher of mine once said that practice prepares the mind, but suffering prepares the heart. Perhaps the final step in the healing of all wounds is the discovery of the capacity for compassion, an intuitive knowing that no one is singled out in their suffering, that all living beings are vulnerable to loss, attachment, and limitation. It is only in the presence of compassion that we can show our wounds without diminishing our wholeness. The Dalai Lama has said that “compassion occurs only between equals.” For those who have compassion, woundedness is not a place of judgment but a place of genuine meeting.

When we recognize the spark of God in others, we blow on it with our attention and strengthen it. No matter how deeply it has been buried or for how long .... When we bless someone, we touch the unborn goodness in them and wish it well.

We are all here for a single purpose: to grow in wisdom and to learn to love better.

to her parents in relief, I asked if it was another one. “No,” her mother said, “it was the same one that was lost.” Dr. X had come that afternoon and brought it to them. I told them how glad I was that it had been found. “Yes,” her father said. “We are too.” Then he smiled. “She is safe now, no matter what happens,” he told me. The following morning, the surgery resident told me how the medal had been found. On the previous day, Dr. X had made his patient care rounds much as usual, followed by a dozen of the young surgeons he was training. But instead of ending the rounds in the ICU, he had taken them all to the laundry department in the subbasement of the hospital. There, he explained what had happened, and then he and all his residents and fellows had gone through the pediatric laundry from the day before